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on Demographic Economics |
| By: | Boustan, Leah; Jensen, Mathias Fjællegaard; Abramitzky, Ran; Jácome, Elisa; Manning, Alan; Pérez, Santiago; Watley, Analysia; Adermon, Adrian; Arellano-Bover, Jaime; Åslund, Olof; Connolly, Marie; Deutscher, Nathan; Gielen, Anne C.; Giesing, Yvonne; Govind, Yajna; Halla, Martin; Hangartner, Dominik; Jiang, Yuyan; Karmel, Cecilia; Landaud, Fanny; Macmillan, Lindsey; Martínez, Isabel Z.; Polo, Alberto; Poutvaara, Panu; Rapoport, Hillel; Roman, Sara; Salvanes, Kjell G; San, Shmuel; Siegenthaler, Michael; Sirugue, Louis; Soria Espín, Javier; Stuhler, Jan; Violante, Giovanni L.; Webbink, Dinand; Weber, Andrea; Zhang, Jonathan; Zheng, Angela; Zohar, Tom |
| Abstract: | We estimate intergenerational mobility of children of immigrants in fifteen receiving countries. Children of immigrants have somewhat lower income than children of local-born parents. Around half of this gap can be explained by differences in parental income, with the remainder due to differences in mobility parameters. The daughters of immigrants enjoy higher absolute mobility than daughters of locals in most destinations. Absolute mobility of sons of immigrants is higher outside Europe and lower in Europe compared to sons of locals. Cross-country differences in absolute mobility are not driven by parental country-of-origin, but instead by destination labor markets and immigration policy. |
| Keywords: | Intergenerational mobility; Immigration |
| JEL: | J15 J61 J62 |
| Date: | 2025–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20003 |
| By: | Kim, Daisoon; Yum, Minchul |
| Abstract: | South Korea has been facing persistently low fertility rates and large gender gaps in labor supply. In response, the government has expanded parental leave benefits to address these challenges. To evaluate the effectiveness of these policies, we develop a quantitative, heterogeneous-household life-cycle model in which couples make joint decisions on careers, labor supply, savings, and child-related choices, including fertility, childcare, and parental leave take-up. The model is calibrated to recent Korean cohorts to replicate key patterns observed in the data, including segmented labor markets where career-oriented jobs require high entry costs and long working hours. We find that generous benefits increase fertility and reduce gender gaps in labor supply and wages by enabling more women to remain in career-oriented jobs during their child's early years, facilitating career advancement later. The positive labor supply effects are particularly strong among highly educated parents, and the policy can be self-financing through higher lifetime labor supply. Finally, we find that incentivizing joint parental leave use is more effective than mandating it and that the positive fertility effects may weaken when parents place greater emphasis on child quality---a trend observed in recent years. |
| JEL: | E24 J22 D13 J13 J16 |
| Date: | 2025–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19951 |
| By: | Canessa, Stella (LMU Munich); Dahl, Gordon (University of California, San Diego); Hasselqvist, Anna (DIW Berlin); Meghir, Costas (Yale University); Niknami, Susan (SOFI, Stockholm University); Palme, Mårten (Stockholm University); Rainer, Helmut (LMU Munich); Rosenqvist, Olof (IFAU, Uppsala University); Xiao, Pengpeng (Duke University) |
| Abstract: | Divorce reshapes family life, yet little is known about one of its most consequential features: the allocation of child custody. We study the impact of joint versus sole custody on both parents and children using rich administrative data from Sweden linked to over 25 years of newly-collected court custody rulings. To address selection concerns, we exploit random assignment of custody disputes to judges who differ sharply in their propensity to grant joint custody. For fathers, joint custody substantially raises earnings and improves mental health, consistent with sustained paternal involvement enhancing labor market attachment and psychological well-being. In contrast, there are no measurable labor market or mental health effects for mothers. Turning to children, joint custody increases standardized test scores and school quality without affecting mental health out comes. Joint custody increases fathers’ chances of remarriage, keeps separated parents in closer geographic proximity, and has no effect on intimate partner violence allegations against either partner. These findings inform longstanding debates over the role of child custody in shaping post-divorce family life. |
| Keywords: | child custody, divorce |
| JEL: | J12 J13 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18802 |
| By: | Philipp Dierker (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany) |
| Abstract: | Sibship size is a widely studied predictor of educational attainment. However, existing research documents its average effect on schooling, not whether it reshapes how strongly children's individual potential translates into attainment. This study tests that question using a child's educational attainment polygenic index (EA PGI) as a marker of educational propensity. Controlling for parental genotype leaves any remaining variation in children's genetic marker randomized, providing a natural experiment that identifies direct genetic effects on completed education. Across more than 17, 000 genotyped respondents from two large-scale surveys conducted in the United States, Add Health and the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, each with parental EA PGIs Mendelian-imputed from genotyped sibling pairs, the EA PGI's effect on years of schooling declines by roughly 20-25 percent from one to six siblings (1.08-0.86 years per SD in Add Health; 0.90-0.68 in WLS). The attenuation is replicated in both cohorts and remains statistically significant in the WLS after conditioning on parental EA PGIs; a related analysis using a parental fertility PGI as a proxy for sibship size supports these findings. Because larger sibships are concentrated among disadvantaged families, this pattern is consistent with resource dilution, and represents a channel through which stratified fertility reproduces educational inequality. |
| Keywords: | USA, children, education, genetics, siblings |
| JEL: | J1 Z0 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dem:wpaper:wp-2026-034 |
| By: | Fontenay, Sébastien; Gobbi, Paula Eugenia; Goñi, Marc |
| Abstract: | Fertility in sub-Saharan Africa is the highest in the world. We showcase a driver of this exceptionally high fertility which has been largely overlooked by demographers and economists: inheritance customs. We develop a theory of inheritance under subsistence agriculture, where households face economic incentives to limit fertility to avoid dividing land into inefficiently small parcels. Consequently, fertility is higher where inheritance is transmitted to a single heir (impartible) than where it is divided equally among all children (partible). We test this prediction by linking deep-rooted inheritance customs for more than 800 ethnic groups with modern demographic surveys covering 24 countries. Exploiting ancestral borders in a spatial Regression Discontinuity Design, we show that belonging to an ethnic group with impartible inheritance increases fertility by around one child per woman and that fertility differences are larger in lands subject to indivisibilities than in lands suited for cultivating labor-intensive crops. |
| Keywords: | Fertility; Inheritance; Sub-saharan africa |
| JEL: | J10 K11 O10 |
| Date: | 2025–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20275 |
| By: | Attanasio, Orazio; Conti, Gabriella; Jervis, Pamela; Meghir, Costas; Okbay, Aysu |
| Abstract: | We evaluate impacts heterogeneity of an Early Childhood Intervention in Colombia, with respect to the Educational Attainment Polygenic Score (EA4 PGS) constructed from DNA data based on GWAS weights from a European population. We find that the EA4 PGS is predictive of several measures of child development, mother’s IQ and, to some extent, educational attainment. We also show that the impacts of the intervention are significantly greater in children with low PGS, to the point that the intervention eliminates the initial genetic disadvantage. Lastly, we find that children with high PGS attract more parental stimulation; however, the latter increases more strongly in children with low PGS. |
| JEL: | C21 J13 I24 |
| Date: | 2025–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20221 |
| By: | Aboulhosn, Aya; Aksoy, Cevat Giray; Ozcan, Berkay |
| Abstract: | Debates about immigration’s role in addressing population aging typically concentrate on immigrant fertility rates. Moreover, standard projections account for migration’s impact on overall population growth while largely overlooking how immigration might affect native fertility. In contrast, we show that forced immigration influences native fertility as well. We investigate this relationship by examining the influx of refugees into Türkiye following the onset of the Syrian civil war in 2011. Using two complementary instrumental variable strategies, we find robust evidence that native fertility increases in response to forced migration. This result holds across three distinct datasets and is further supported by a corresponding rise in subjective fertility measures, such as the ideal number of children. Additionally, we explore four potential mechanisms and document significant heterogeneity in fertility responses among different native subgroups. Our findings suggest that factors related to the labor market and norm transmission may help explain the observed increase in native fertility. |
| JEL: | J13 R23 F22 |
| Date: | 2025–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19930 |
| By: | Conti, Gabriella; Ginja, Rita; Persson, Petra; Willage, Barton |
| Abstract: | The motherhood penalty is well-documented, but what happens at the other end of the reproductive spectrum? Menopause — a transition often marked by debilitating physical and psychological symptoms — also entails substantial costs. Using population-wide Norwegian and Swedish data and quasi-experimental methods, we show that a menopause diagnosis leads to lasting drops in earnings and employment, alongside greater reliance on social transfers. The impact is especially severe for women with lower socioeconomic status. Increasing access to menopause-related health care can help offset these losses. Our findings reveal the hidden economic toll of menopause and the potential gains from better support policies. |
| JEL: | I10 J01 J13 |
| Date: | 2025–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20169 |
| By: | Philipp Dierker (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany); Dalton Conley |
| Abstract: | Parents’ and teachers’ expectations and aspirations are critical drivers of educational outcomes, yet what causally shapes these expectations remains unclear. In the present study, we address this question by deploying the random experiment of meiosis: namely, conditional on parental genotype, offspring genotype is random, allowing for the unconfounding of unique child characteristics from the more general family and household environment. Using the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, we employ Mendelian imputation to estimate the direct genetic effects of 18 polygenic indices on college encouragement, net of parental genetic background. The genetic propensity for educational attainment and mathematical ability predict stronger expectations of college attendance, while smoking behavior predicts weaker expectations. Psychiatric traits show no effects after multiple-testing correction, indicating that responses are concentrated on cognitive and behavioral traits. Mediation analysis finds that prospectively measured teachers’ encouragement accounts for roughly a quarter of the genetic effects on educational attainment for cognitive traits, but not for psychiatric traits. Genetic effects on expectations are amplified among high-SES parents and first-born children. Thus, genetic influences on educational expectations are narrow in trait scope and uneven across families, with encouragement serving as one channel linking genetic differences to educational inequality. |
| Keywords: | USA, children, education, genetics, parents, teachers |
| JEL: | J1 Z0 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dem:wpaper:wp-2026-035 |
| By: | Arenas, Andreu (University of Barcelona (IEB, IPERG)); Bosch, Marc (Ivà lua); Frias, Nerea (National Institute of Economic and Social Research) |
| Abstract: | We estimate the effect of work from home (WFH) on public-sector productivity by evaluating a mandatory return-to-office (RTO) policy in the Catalan judiciary. Leveraging cross-court variation in pre-mandate WFH intensity, difference-in-differences estimates show that terminating WFH reduced procedural output by 5.6 percent, with no offsetting changes in document quality or absenteeism. Evidence from a multi-stakeholder survey suggests a multitasking reallocation: filing tasks are performed on a digital platform and become easier under WFH, whereas coordination with lawyers is synchronous and harder to monitor. WFH thus shifted effort toward filing tasks and away from coordination. Perceived impacts follow a gradient: case managers and supervisors, who benefit from bureaucratic efficiency, are positive about WFH, while lawyers, who depend on service coordination, are clearly negative. |
| Keywords: | WFH, public-sector productivity, multitasking, judiciary |
| JEL: | J22 J45 M54 D73 H83 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18795 |